Frenzied Fiction Author:Stephen Leacock Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: ///—The Prophet in Our Midst Eminent Authority looked round at the little group of us seated about him at the club. He was telling us, or beginning to tell us... more », about the outcome of the war. It was a thing we wanted to know. We were listening attentively. We felt that we were "getting something." "I doubt very much," he said, "whether Downing Street realises the enormous power which the Quai d'Orsay has over the Yildiz Kiosk." "So do I," I said, "what is it?" But he hardly noticed the interruption. "You've got to remember," he went on, "that from the point of view of the Yildiz, the Wil- helmstrasse is just a thing of yesterday." "Quite so," I said. "Of course," he added, "the Ballplatz is quite different." "Altogether different," I admitted. "Andmind you," he said, "the Ballplatz itself can be largely moved from the Quirinal through the Vatican." "Why of course it can," I agreed, with as much relief in my tone as I could put into it. After all, what simpler way of moving the Ballplatz than that? The Eminent Authority took another sip at his tea, and looked round at us through his spectacles. It was I who was taking on myself to do most of the answering, because it was I who had brought him there and invited the other men to meet him. "He's coming round at five," I had said, "do come and have a cup of tea and meet him. He knows more about the European situation and the probable solution than any other man living." Naturally they came gladly. They wanted to know,—as everybody wants to know, —how the war will end. They were just ordinary plain men like myself. I could see that they were a little mystified, perhaps disappointed. They would have liked, just as I would, to ask a few plain questions, such as, can the Italians knock the stuff out of the Au...« less